


A Pretty Face

by musicforswimming



Category: Watchmen
Genre: Canon Related, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Rape/Non-con Elements, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-15
Updated: 2009-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:53:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicforswimming/pseuds/musicforswimming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sally cleans herself up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pretty Face

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed ficlet written as part of a prompt meme on LJ.

Someone, somewhere, says that it's no wonder she learned how to fight: why, she'd have to, to keep all the boys away!

The truth is, she liked it -- she liked the way a good high kick felt onstage, but she liked it even better when the spike of her heel or the point of her toe crunched hard against someone's head. Sally had two brothers growing up, one of them younger, and before she got old enough for them all to fully understand the differences between them, she could fight just as hard and just as dirty as any of them, and beat the little one just as good as the big one could.

She didn't show up for meetings for a few weeks after they sat for the photo: not 'till she was sure her nose had healed up okay. The first night, she kept a chair under her door to hold it closed and sat in the bathroom in her apartment (an apartment of her own, with a private bathroom: not many men back in the tenements Ma and Dad had lived in ever got to that, much less the girls). She locked the bathroom door, too, and didn't let the water run because she might not be able to hear --

The thing was just to keep the soaked rag on it, and every time the water of the rag seemed to adjust to her body and warm up a little, she dipped it in the sink again. Sally wasn't stupid, didn't need to catch cold on top of a possibly (oh please, God, no) broken nose, and she dragged all her blankets and her bathrobe, too, into the bathroom and sat wrapped up in them, every door and window in the apartment locked, and hoped to God her nose would set all right. Must've been the water got to her after awhile, though, because robe and blankets or no, she found she was freezing.

A few years later, her brothers went off to fight in Europe and neither of them came back. But Sally's nose was fine, looked just as nice as it did in the photo, when she finally got it.


End file.
